Article Objective: To assist users in navigating Active Ledger & Reporting with completing compliance work for a sole trader. Context: At the end of every financial year, you must allocate income to the beneficiaries of a trust, partnership, and sole trader. Active Ledger can be set up to accommodate this situation based on your firm's requirements. Please refer to the Glossary for definitions of key terms used in this article. TABLE OF CONTENTS |
Setting up the accounts
After you have created a dataset and connected it to a source, navigate to the Accounts screen. Here, all unallocated accounts will be sitting to the right of the chart of accounts.
For information on how to set up the file, see the knowledge article: Datasets - overview.
As you are allocating accounts, ensure all equity related accounts are put to the correct header. For example, accounts such as Capital Introduced or Drawings should be allocated to Proprietor Funds, as below.
For information on how to allocate accounts, see the knowledge article: Accounts - overview.
Note: If your Admin has created custom headers in the standard chart of accounts for individuals, you may see a wand or star icon next to the account name depending on which rules have been created in the Admin Centre. These are referred to as account recommendations. When the icon is selected, it will provide you with some options, as below.
For more information relating to account recommendations, see the knowledge article: Accounts - overview.
In this case, we are going to link 'Capital Introduced' and 'Drawings' to their recommended standard accounts. This will update the names accordingly and turn the wand icons into green ticks to indicate the recommendation has been accepted.
Distribution of profit
Once the profit is ready to be distributed, navigate to the Datasets screen and select the relevant dataset to distribute from.
Once in the dataset, select the Other Info tab along the top and navigate to the Distributions section.
For information on how to use the distribution tool, see the knowledge article: Datasets - other info - distributions.
After the distribution journal has been posted, if you created any new accounts during this process, navigate back to the Accounts screen and allocate these accordingly.
As seen below, the accounts now include a Share of Profit and Profit Distributed account.
Generating a report
Once the accounts have been finalised and you are ready to generate a report, navigate to the Reports screen. For information on how to do this, see the knowledge article: Reporting - creating a report.
When creating a report, scroll to the Pages section and click Customise on the 'Balance Sheet' page.
In here, you can collapse the retained earnings section by clicking on the downwards arrow to the left of the 'Retained Earnings' header.
Note: As the net result of all these accounts are NIL, this will tidy up the report.
Once collapsed, click Generate Report.
Refer below for an example of how your Balance Sheet should look once finalised.
Note: Yours may vary slightly depending on what accounts you have used and the complexity of your accounts.
